Free Republic

Mother's Day is one of the busiest days for the American restaurant industry. It also has a reputation among waiters and restaurant staff as one of the most grueling days on the calendar. "Every server knows that working on Mother's Day is hell. In fact, if I die and go to hell, I completely expect it to be Mother's Day. 365 days a year," wrote Darron Cardosa, in his book "The Bitchy Waiter: I'm Really Good at Pretending to Care." What's so bad about it? From big groups that show up in waves ("most of us are here!"), to food-fussy...

Attractive females saw their grades drop when classes and exams moved online during the pandemic, a study suggests. Adrian Mehic, a post-doctoral researcher at Lund University, analyzed the scores of 300 male and female engineering students in Sweden before and after Covid hit. A panel of more than 70 separate participants to grade the attractiveness of each student based on photographs of their faces. The study found a significant decline in average college grades among attractive female students — but only in 'qualitative' courses where teachers and students were more likely to interact. These include classes like business and economics,...

It felt like a watershed moment for a scattered and still-young civil rights movement. Inside Black Lives Matter, the national revulsion over videos of police officers shooting to death black men in Minnesota and Louisiana was undeniable proof that the group’s message of outrage and demands for justice had finally broken through. Even the white governor of Minnesota, Mark Dayton, in a pained public concession, embraced the movement’s central argument. “Would this have happened if those passengers — the driver and the passengers — were white?” he asked. “I don’t think it would’ve.” Then, in an instant, everything changed. Black...

Almost eight years after Barack Obama’s election as the nation’s first black president –an event that engendered a sense of optimism among many Americans about the future of race relations1 – a series of flashpoints around the U.S. has exposed deep racial divides and reignited a national conversation about race. A new Pew Research Center survey finds profound differences between black and white adults in their views on racial discrimination, barriers to black progress and the prospects for change. Blacks, far more than whites, say black people are treated unfairly across different realms of life, from dealing with the police...

A trending social media hashtag has highlighted experiences of possible racial bias by users of the AirBnB rental app. Quirtina Crittenden, a 23-year-old business consultant living in Chicago, who is African-American, started the hashtag #AirBnBWhileBlack after noting how often she was declined by hosts when seeking a place to rent – even when the apartments advertised appeared to be available. “The hosts would always come up with excuses like, ‘oh, someone actually just booked it’ or ‘oh, some of my regulars are coming in town, and they’re going to stay there,’” Crittenden said in an NPR interview. “But I got...

"...Mr. Buckley would surely not be surprised at the Rolling Stone episode. He described it effectively a full fifty-five years before the story was published, not to mention long before the central participants targeted in the story were even born. Indeed he predicted this kind of story almost a full decade before Rolling Stone — founded in 1967 — existed. What Buckley knew in 1959 was this: >>> I shall be assuming that in most respects the liberal ideologists are, like Don Quixote, wholly normal, with fully developed powers of thought, that they see things as they are, and live...

The Log Cabin Republicans, a gay Republican group, on Wednesday criticized a new ad from Rick Perry in which the Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate suggests "there's something wrong" when gays can serve openly in the military but kids "can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school." "Our nation was built upon individual liberty and individual responsibility, and open service by gay and lesbian servicemembers is directly in line with the vision of our Founding Fathers," said R. Clarke Cooper, Executive Director of the Log Cabin Republicans. "It is wrong for Governor Perry to assume being a person of...

President Obama of late is making the rounds of aggrieved Democratic constituencies. Next up, a Saturday address to the Human Rights Campaign. "Some LGBT rights supporters are hoping that Obama will take advantage of the opportunity to endorse marriage equality and to denounce initiatives that would ban marriage rights for same-sex couples in Minnesota and North Carolina," reports the Washington Blade. Probably not, for at least two reasons: While Obama has said his stance opposing gay marriage is "evolving," he has given no signal it's fully evolved since he declined to endorse gay marriage in June.

Several House and Senate Democrats joined feminists at a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday to push for the introduction and passage of a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women’s rights. The conference was timed to coincide with the reading of the U.S. Constitution on the House floor, as ordered by the newly elected Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio). “Recently, Supreme Court Justice (Antonin) Scalia stated his opinion that no provision in the Constitution, or the 14th amendment, would provide full and true equality to women and give them protection against sex discrimination,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said....

Leftists who decried the War on Terror now use the same terminology to describe center-Left members of their own party. On last night’s episode of MSNBC’s The Ed Show, Ed Schultz interviewed Katrina vanden Heuvel about President Obama’s “sellout” on the health care bill. Katrina complained Obama’s is “a White House which has emboldened the conservadems, people like Joe Lieberman” who “is now holding hostage” socialized medicine. She repeated the elocution moments later while appealing to “citizens who don’t want to be held hostage by the insurance companies.” Schultz thanked her for appearing, adding, “Always the truth coming from you...

Gay advocates will push to replace freshman Sen. Joseph Addabbo. Gay advocates are on the warpath after the state Senate killed same-sex marriage last week, and few Democratic senators who voted against the bill are safe from their wrath.After spending more than $1 million to help the Democrats retake the chamber for the first time in decades, powerful gay activists and donors say they'll support challengers against anti-gay-marriage senators in 2010. "It's going to be a bloodbath," one gay operative predicted. "We're going to use every single weapon in our quiver to take these people out. We either need to...

Dozens of people crowded the steps of Vallejo City Hall on Tuesday to protest a recent quoted remark by Mayor Osby Davis that gay people would not go to heaven. The protesters waved rainbow flags, held signs demanding the separation of church and state and some called for Davis' resignation. And then there was a roar. From inside City Hall came the sounds of more than 100 people clapping and cheering, praising God. "Lord, we're not against anybody. We're for our children," prayed New Hope Church Community Senior Pastor Terrence Nichols. "No matter what outside forces may stir up the...

Washington – The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, today responded to the “Manhattan Declaration” produced and released by 145 evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders indicating that they will not cooperate with laws that conflict with their beliefs, including those recognizing same-sex couples. The document also references the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) as a threat to religious liberty. Yet ENDA – which prohibits workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity – broadly exempts religious organizations. The declaration also argues that religious groups that receive public funds...

The NAACP is accusing Wells Fargo and HSBC of forcing blacks into subprime mortgages while whites with identical qualifications got lower rates. Class-action lawsuits will be filed against the banks Friday in federal court in Los Angeles, Austin Tighe, co-lead counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, told The Associated Press. Black homebuyers have been 3 1/2 times more likely to receive a subprime loan than white borrowers, and six times more likely to get a subprime rate when refinancing, Tighe said. Blacks still were disproportionately steered into subprime loans when their credit scores, income and...

In his radio address [Saturday] morning, President Bush went after the Democrats on energy: The fundamental problem behind high gas prices is that the supply of oil has not kept up with the rising demand across the world. One obvious solution is for America to increase our domestic oil production. So my Administration has repeatedly called on Congress to open access to new oil exploration here in the United States. Unfortunately, Democrats on Capitol Hill have rejected virtually every proposal. Now Americans are paying the price at the pump for this obstruction. So this week, I asked Democratic congressional leaders...

Washington, D.C. — Concerned Women for America (CWA) expressed its strong dismay at the multibillion-dollar broadcast industry’s latest attempt to abuse the public airwaves. After repeatedly offending the public with indecent broadcasts, four major broadcasters filed what CWA believes are frivolous lawsuits challenging the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) recent rulings. A license to broadcast doesn’t give anyone – not even super-rich Big-Media conglomerates – the right to broadcast indecent language between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. The four major broadcasters want the courts to approve the indiscriminate use of words for excretory and explicit sexual conduct. “All four broadcast networks...

While hurricanes Katrina and Rita put more than 300,000 Louisiana residents in unemployment lines almost overnight, state employee layoffs remain a rarity. An estimated 197 state workers are set to lose their jobs through a variety of storm-related actions, including spending cuts ordered by Gov. Kathleen Blanco, state records show. However, most of the initial round of layoffs apply to workers listed as "missing," which means they have not been in contact with state officials since the storms. About 4,600 state workers are on furlough, which means they remain on the state payroll without collecting paychecks. Many are expected to...

Fourteen months after Hurricane Charley devastated this Gulf Coast town, hundreds of people still are living in row after row of government-owned mobile homes that were supposed to be temporary housing. Many of the residents of "FEMA Village" -- the temporary community of 1,600 residents living in 500 mobile homes provided by the federal agency -- regarded the approaching storm Thursday with the stoicism of those who have lost everything already.FEMA workers passed out a hurricane guide and papers warning inhabitants of FEMA Village to follow local emergency orders and to put chairs and barbecue grills inside should a hurricane...